Marie-Hélène Budworth

As you can see, I took an unexpected hiatus from Blogging.  My apologies to anyone who noticed! 

I signed on to teach 3 online courses that began in April.  All three courses were in  condensed summer sessions.  There were 450 students enrolled across three sections.  Needless to say, it was and continues to be (as the courses are not over) overwhelming.  It is all that I can do to keep my inbox at a manageable level.  So here is what I have learned so far about online teaching.

1. Ideally online courses should have small enrolment numbers.  Interactive spaces online such as discussion boards and chats become overwhelming when there are large numbers of people in the online environment.  This is a problem not only for the instructor but also a challenge for students.  Becoming engaged with others can be difficult – where do I join the conversation?  Where do I start reading?  I tried to mitigate this by creating Wiki groups for one of the courses.  These were intended to be small study groups where students could share their notes and learn from one another.  The challenge here was that students were working at different paces so some Wikis were more active than others.  Some Wikis had one or two students doing all of the work. 

2. There will be technical issues.  I tried to use a really friendly and easy to access format for the course.  To a large extent I needed to use a platform supported by the university – Moodle.  But behind that platform, I could decide how I streamed video and the format I used to share files.  Despite my best attempts to create an easy to use, intuitive interface, students ran into technical difficulties.  Some of this was due to compatibility issues with computers or browsers and for some students, it had to do with the fact that my idea of ‘intuitive’ did not match their idea of ‘intuitive.’  It is an important reminder that design is important but it can never address all questions.  In future, I might take additional steps to assist people in getting started.  For example, I might put together a video tour of the online environment using ‘screencapture’ software that allows me to walk students through the first module. 

3. Online learning requires a great deal of self-management.  This is not news to me, but these courses have been a good reminder that students differ greatly in their ability to self-manage.  Learning in general requires abilities beyond general intelligence.  In the learning literature we call the skills related to organizing learning and directing attention – metacogntiive skills.  Self-management in online learning presents a new challenge to students who have spent most of their careers learning in traditional classrooms.  There is no class schedule to dictate the pace of learning.  The modules are mounted and students are responsible for ‘keeping up.’  It is easy to underestimate the time required to view lectures, read the assigned material, and participate in the collaborative activities.  I had more than a few students email me a few weeks into the course indicating that they did not know where to find the course website.  This was a bad sign.  In order to be successful, the learner needs to have well developed metacognitive skills. 

I continue to learn from this experience. It continues to be overwhelming!  However, it is nearing the end and I am able to come up for air periodically.  I will be back to blogging more regularly.  See you soon. 

iPad 2 is coming!!  I have put a reminder about the Canadian launch date into my calendar and I am now counting the days – there are 2 left, if you were interested.  Obviously, I am what technology marketers would call an ‘early adopter.‘  I love a gadget.  I also love to look for ways to integrate the newest technology into my work.  I have the first generation iPad and I have found it incredibly useful for reading PDF journal articles, proofing manuscripts, and keeping up with the news through Blogs, traditional media, and twitter.   In my personal life, I use it to entertain my kids, read magazines, and watch videos when away from home.  It really is an impressive machine… but I am getting off track.  

Psychologists and management researchers have a significant interest in how technology is used in the workplace.  There are research streams that investigate how technology impacts performance, how it blurs the line between work and home, and how it affects communication.  Each of these avenues is incredibly interesting and is producing useful practical knowledge.

As you know, I am interested in relationships at work.  Technology is having a profound impact on how we interact with one another.  I am not convinced that technology will disrupt our fundamental understanding of interpersonal interactions, but I do think it has the potential to mediate or moderate a range of meaningful interactions.  

For example, technology makes knowledge accessible to the masses.  Information that used to be specialized can now be widely understood if a person has a computer and knows how to ‘google.’  This has implications for expertise and for learning.  The ‘expert’ is most useful when their knowledge or insight provides something unique.  This will become harder and harder to do.  The new job of the expert will be to help people understand the limits of their knowledge!  A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!  A Wikipedia-type understanding of the world is limited and can encourage faulty decision-making.  

A second example can easily be found in the work done on emotions in the workplace.  Most interactions that rely on technology lack richness in social cues (see media richness theory).  In other words, when interacting with others via technology (email, or even facetime) you do not have the benefit of all of the possible social cues that are available through live interactions, such as tone of voice, body language, or small changes in facial expressions.  A savvy communicator is constantly using these cues to manage content and delivery of their message, weigh comprehension, or assess level of agreement.  The signals influence outcomes in all kinds of relationships including – manager/subordinate interactions, coaching, and mentoring.  We have all experienced times when email has led to misunderstanding, confusion, and even anger.  Can ‘face to face’ software that allows us to communicate using videocameras mitigate these potential negative outcomes?  There are a myriad of other possible research question – as many as there are new technologies, if not more.  

For the moment, I will continue to count down.

The recent events in Japan along with recent events in my own small world, have focussed my thinking on the link between work and ‘life.’  The idea of ‘making a difference’ or doing something ‘meaningful’ at work has always resonated with me.  I have been fortunate enough to have landed in a career where it is easy to derive meaning – both through my research and my teaching.  I determine my own research program so I choose topics that I find impactful.  In the realm of teaching, I have the opportunity to engage with many different types of students.  Depending on who they are and where they are, there are all kinds of ways to develop meaningful and important relationships.  I rely heavily on the flexibility within my work and the associated relationships when the larger world looms in my consciousness.  This is how I wake up on Monday following an earthquake that kills thousands and still feel as though I have an important job to do.  

I would be really curious to hear about what ‘does it‘ for you?  Now, I am not naive.  I recognize that most people get up and get themselves to work because they have to – as do I.  There are bills to pay and people to support.  The question I am asking is, do you go to work feeling as though there is something important to be done even when faced with personal or global tragedy?  If yes, what is it about your work that makes you feel as though your contribution is important and meaningful?  If not, what is missing?  

There is a large literature on happiness at work and even more on job satisfaction.  Those literatures certainly inform this discussion – as does the vast research on work motivation.  However, today, I think the stakes have changed a bit.  We are so connected to the larger world and to one another in a way that we have not been in the past.  I watched real time video of the tsunami hitting Japan.  I can check my Facebook and see quickly who is ill, who has experienced a loss, and who is out of a job.  It feels as though there is more ‘bad’ news than ever today, but I am inclined to believe that in part this has something to do with our access to the news.  Research in psychology clearly tells us that our own hardship is compounded by the difficulties of those around us.  In fact, when we are experiencing hardship, we are more likely to hold a ‘negative schema’ (or negative view of the world) and as a result, more likely to take note of the negative events.  

In the face of all of this ‘bad news’ what keeps you connected, engaged, and satisfied in your work?  What makes you believe that it is important to answer your emails and attend the 4pm meeting?  What makes you run the race?  Let me know.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about how testing is related to learning.  More recently, the Globe and Mail published a short piece on encouraging creativity in children.  Anne McIroy cited findings by James Kaufman, an experimental psychologist at California State University.  Kaufman found that if children know they are going to be tested on a topic, they become less creative in their approach to it.  In other words, they begin to focus on learning the material in the way it is being taught rather than considering the material and ‘what else’ it might mean.  This is an important extension to the findings I blogged about a few days ago – ‘testing and learning.‘  When planning developmental opportunities, we really need to consider the outcomes we are aiming for in designing the initiatives.    

Creativity, in particular, is a tricky outcome to harness in an organized, structured setting.  In order to be creative people need to feel free to share ideas, wild ideas.  They need to be willing to take risks and move away from the expected.  In most learning environments this is discouraged.  It is no shock that testing would discourage creativity.  When evaluation and judgement are eminent, people play it pretty safe.  So how would you design a developmental opportunity that encourages creativity?  

There is a vast literature on creativity and innovation, both at the individual, team, and the organizational level.  At the individual level, creativity is a set of cognitive processes.  People are creative when they think about ideas across categories.  The classic example is a test where the researcher asks the study participant to come up with uses for a brick.  Predictable answers include: building a house, repairing a wall, creating shelving.  These are all building or structural uses.  A person is creative when they begin to move across categories of use (e.g., bug whacker, breaking a window, door stop, throwing for distance).  Research indicates that some people naturally move ‘outside the box‘ while others can be encouraged to do so using questions such as ‘what else could you do with the brick?’ ‘can you think of an entirely different use?’

Creativity in groups and teams is another challenge.  In general, individuals are more creative than groups.  This is counterintuitive given that groups have the benefit of different viewpoints and ideas from the different group members, however, groups have ways of behaving that are completely contrary to creativity.  If I were to ask you to come up with as many uses for a toothbrush as you possibly could and write them down on a piece of paper (I promise you will not be tested or evaluated on the quality of your responses); in another room I ask a group to do the same thing –  who do you think will come up with the most responses, both in number and in categories of use?  The individual.  As an individual, you will write every idea that comes to mind.  I asked you to write down anything without fear of evaluation.  In the group, evaluation and criticism are built into the process.  If I say something out loud, I am opening myself up to judgement from every member of the group and, in reality, the group will take the opportunity to judge – “giggle giggle”  “that is a silly answer” “I don’t think that will work.”  This ‘process’ reduces the group’s ability to be creative.  In order to be creative, groups need to learn to separate idea generation from idea evaluation – and group members need to trust that they will not be judged.  It is the momentum of free flowing, sometimes wacky, ideas that will encourage that brilliant visionary innovation.  

In organizations, encouraging creativity is about culture.  Is creativity valued here?  Is it important to us as an organization?  Will I be rewarded for it?  And importantly, do I have time for it?  Being creative often requires time to sit, consider, try things out, make mistakes, revise plans, and try again.  In a large number of organizations, the pace is fast and time is a luxury.  However, if your business is built on innovations and creativity, there needs to be time to tinker and play around.  This is why we often find that the most creative organizations have a hint of a ‘playful’, ‘fun-loving‘ culture (e.g., Virgin).  Without sponsored ‘tinkering‘ our world would be missing out on some pretty great stuff.  For a clear example, and possibly some inspiration, take a look at the story of the Post-It Note.

Julia Kirby recently blogged about young entrepreneurs Page & Brin (google), Jobs (Apple), and Zuckerberg (facebook) on the Harvard Business Review website.  She made the point that each of these entrepreneurs sought out assistance from ‘seasoned’ business leaders as their organizations grew.  The interesting point, Kirby points out, is that Page and Brin appointed a CEO while Zuckerberg appointed a COO.  In other words, the inventors of google sought guidance while the facebook head sought advisement.  These are very different models for learning.  The first concedes expertise while the second implies that the inventor ultimately knows best but could benefit from hearing another perspective.  

The interesting question is what model works best.  I think we would all concede that Zuckerberg has managed facebook quite well (despite some initial lawsuits about the origin of the idea).  Similarly Page & Brin have done just fine so far.  It would still be interesting to examine what aspect of each model lead to success.  The google model feels like a mentoring relationship.  There is a mentor and a protegee.  It is understood that the mentor has knowledge and experience that can be of value to the protegee.  In addition, the mentor is grooming the protegee so that she/he can advance and eventually achieve a similar level of success.  The facebook example does not fit existing learning models that are relationship based.  On the surface, it appears to be a leadership paradigm in which the leader surrounds him or herself with people who have the skills and knowledge that may be lacking.  I would be interested in hearing about how Zuckerberg learned from Sheryl Sandberg.  Was she treated as an advisor?  Or was there some behind the scenes mentoring or coaching?  

How do the titles and the hierarchy impact the opportunity for learning?  Can we effectively learn from others who hold positions subordinate to our own?  Or does the power structure limit our ability to value ideas from these sources?

An article published in Science this week, and reviewed in the New York Times, describes findings about the role of testing in learning.  The findings are interesting because they are not entirely consistent with our current views of how people learn.  

We often view the ‘test‘ as a necessary evil.  It serves the purpose of evaluation, separating high performers from the less capable.  It makes people anxious and uncomfortable.  We avoid them, defer them, and ask for substitutions.  As employees, we become insulted when our employer asks us to take a test to ‘prove’ our learning.  However, the study in Science suggests that we should view testing as part of learning.  

In the study, students who were required to take a test learned better than students who took part in other learning activities such as mind mapping and deliberate recall tasks.  There is something about the testing environment that forces students to pay more attention to the material, recognize gaps in their knowledge, and review difficult or misunderstood concepts.  While there is nothing particularly surprising about these findings, it does suggest that we should reconsider the role of testing as a part of learning rather than as a purely administrative function.  

There are still many questions left unanswered.  The process of ‘constructing’ knowledge – or building from experience with the world – is described as deep processing. This is where information can be integrated into our understanding of the world.   We learn how to connect the new information to ourselves, what we know already and what we do all day.  How can testing encourage us to integrate information into our existing world view?  Is testing a part of deep learning or simply a way to encourage simple recall?  Does learning help the application of learning or the recall alone?

This past Friday I met the new cohort in the Master’s of Human Resource Management program.  The first day of a graduate class always marks the beginning of a journey.  Although I bring some outline of what I hope to accomplish over the term, our path is largely guided by the students in the group.  I went over the idea that knowledge is socially constructed on Friday.  The class itself is a clear example of this idea.  

On the first day of any class, I typically do a lot of talking.  It takes us at least that time to figure out the ‘norms‘ for the group.  However, once the class gets into a rhythm we all begin to share ideas and my role turns into that of a facilitator and organizer of information.  The class on Friday moved quickly away from a lecture format and into an idea exchange.  

Students are often asked to read material in preparation for class.  There are few of us who can read and absorb new and complex ideas after a single reading.  Discussions in the classroom allow us to interpret the readings, share interpretations with peers, and deepen our learning.  The knowledge is gained through an exchange or deepening awareness of how the material can be considered, shaped, and illustrated.  Then we can move toward applying the information to practical examples.  This process is a rough sketch of the social construction of knowledge and it represents the unique power of learning in social environments.  

I am in the midst of thinking through how we will teach a number of undergraduate courses online.  The question that comes to mind is how do we recreate this opportunity for social exchange using e-learning platforms.  The answer is actually pretty clear.  There are so many tools available for online interaction and students today have tremendous experience interacting with one another over these types of platforms.  I would suspect that with recent improvements in technology and communication, the ability to offer a more complete learning experience online will be enhanced.  Old online courses were static and relied on pre-recorded audio and powerpoint slides.  With youtube, chat rooms, discussion groups, wikis, videochat, and blogs, the possibilities for online learning are limitless.  Don’t misinterpret; I still see the value of group learning in ‘live’ real time settings.  However, I believe that the delivery mechanism no longer has to interfere with our ability to learn.  Social learning is possible in all kinds of learning environments.